So 0.4.0 Released yesterday. Already bored. Game play pacing is way off.

I played for about 12h yesterday after work and logged off not because I had to go to bed but because I was bored. I actually went to get some work done, I had to get thorough the whole Jira board for my day job. It wasn't urgent, it could have waited til Monday but I was bored. And that there tells you all you need to know about POE2.

I played 4 druid chars trying different builds and all four of them had to SLOG through act 1. So I rolled a lightning arrow and rust king was down in 22 minutes. Not 1h and 15m like the other builds. Why? Because either lightning damage is broken from the the beach or all the other classes are. Thee game is a slog. Its like invading Omaha beach but with less dire consequences of course. You have to tediously punch your way through every pack, every boss, its a complete drag. When you roll another character you look at the campaign and think, "Oh my god, another 40h? I think I have something better to do like clean the toilets."

Maybe that is the goal of POE2? To get us to realize we have better things to do in our life than play a game? :) Nah I am just kidding, I don't think this is "on purpose" it is either bad design or bad pacing. Basically when you get into the game you have to systematically take apart groups one at a time and dodge ground effect instant death circles by the witches that are, by the way, quite hard to see. Thee game throws a flood of creatures at you quickly and it takes until mid act 2 before you have any pacing to make it feel like you have a rhythm. Once we get to the sunken city the pacing is back off again.

The game is designed around having significant AOE clear so it sends enemies at you heavenly but the AOE clear needed is a lot higher than your level. So you end up backing out and trying again, or dying and resetting the whole zone.

Lightning damage is the exception. In act 1 if you play lightning arrow and to a lesser degree spark, it feels about right. You can handle thee flood of enemies and don't get overwhelmed. You still have to dodge ground effects but are able to keep distance.

If you are playing anything Melee you are probably dripping hot wax on sensitive areas of your body as a hobby. You are in point blank and the most devastating damage in the game comes from ground effects that you MUST stand in to do damage but if you stand there and do too much damage you will die. The enemies will surround you, you dont have enough clear and you are taking lots of hits but without appreciably more countermeasures than ranger. So you end up adopting a pick and run play style. Go in, hit, once twice, ground effect, GET OUT. If you go for that third hit the ground effect hits you and you die. If the enemy is on chilled ground or shocked ground you HAVE TO go through it to do damage but you are hit with ticking damage constantly. Meanwhile lightning arrows stays safely out of range.

This is why league after league lightning variants are the meta. I predict this league lightning arrow, lightning spear and Spark will be STRONGER than last league because they will pick up the storm gem from druid and increase their damage further. Meanwhile fire, physical, and every other damage type lags far behind. Chaos damage does OK until near endgame then it falls off which isn't a surprise, even in POE1 chaos damage is difficult to impossible to scale to end game.

Frankly POE2 has a pacing and identity problem. Is the goal the slog I just did with 4 druids? Or is the goal the clear with lightning arrow? At this point you might as well remove the other classes from the game.

These fundamentals are why constantly one or two builds dominate the meta.

As it is now, 12h into the new league, I am bored already. And I haven't even gotten a char out of Act 1. Do with this information what you will but without a STRONG rethink this game will not have the longevity of its predecessor, not even close.

Plus one

Plus two. This game is made for streamers and those with no job and no family.

Exactly same feelings, i just said that in other post where someone said game is too hard,

its like if you play any of 3 core builds you will zoom through campaigne,
if not you better get ready for some pain baby.

yesterday i played for few hours and was really struggling early act 1 to the point flasks were my limiting factor on bosses. and random rares with fire trail that you just cant outheal with low flasks. so i had to take breaks to relax a bit because i was feeling frustration and rage comming up, started cleaning house and doing chores, this morning i was looking forward to shopping, got back to game for few hours and after getting into 24 deadends looking for bonus objective that i never wanted to repeat after the campaigne but its permanent buff i just realized how much im looking forward to not playing this game.

I second the identity crisis bit. If intended gameplay is of every other class than LA, then mixed with slower pace, movement speed, and huge maps that are difficult to read it feels time wasty. And not like at the end of the tunnel theres some amazing gameplay, the valhala and holy grail of action role playing games, making the slog worth it as its just more of the same pain. perhaps a bit faster. and yeah, rolling alts is impossible because why would you.

And i do understand the game is supposed to be different but im struggling to find the end goal fun. theres nothing im looking forward to in the endgame, talent tree is bad, atlas is super uninspired and hardly impactful enough in a meaningful way. The whole idea of builder spender is just a cherry on top of this **** sandwitch. And its not due to lack of endgame content thats still being added, i would expect something in the end game already being like this amazing fun thing.

In poe 1 the whole fun is when your build starts comming online towards end of campaigne you start clearing faster, you can run through maps, act 10 is a matter of minutes and you got that whole glorious endgame to get into.

I've made the (pretty much) same point a few hours ago.

Boring. Slow. Unrewarding. Unbalanced.

I still hold that I had the most fun with the game at EA release (0.1) even with all the disconnects, issues and everything. It was fresh, it was challenging but fun. But the niche wore out pretty fast.

0.2 was a disaster balance-wise, but I still was in the honeymoon phase I guess so I endured. I equated it to a love-hate abusive relationship - with PoE 2 being the abuser.

0.3 was a positive move in the right direction - although purist crybabies were unhappy cause it nudged it closer to PoE1 in design, but is still kinda stood ground as a standalone game. Purists for a game that was about 6 months old at that point? It is weird.

Don't even get me started on the dipshit that started calling people with thousands or tens of thousand of hours with Path of Exile a tourist ... weird times.

I honestly think they should've postponed 0.4 since the endgame rework was not ready. I really, really don't see a point of suffering through the campaign only to get to a meh-version of Monolith of Fate (which itself is mediocre and boring even in LE).

In an ideal (to me) world, I'd go 1-2 months of PoE 1, 1-2 months of PoE 2 with time to try other stuff in between.

I don't feel like coming back to PoE 2 anytime soon after 12 hours of 0.4 tbh. But I might get a good night sleep, or perhaps this cup of coffee i'm drinking right now, or receive a mind-blowing BJ before going to sleep -- which might lead me to making the mistake of booting the game up again tomorrow, sometimes I'm retarded like that when I'm happy.

This early game and entire campaign are getting more and more tedious with every new league. Layouts are way too big and character actions and movement speed are too slow. On top of that, most of the leveling skills feels like crap without access to all supports.

Im not a fan of the one button gameplay, but the idea of forced combination of specific abilities isn't good either - it just locks creativity. Instead of that, i would rather see skills categorized into: AoE, single target, movement, buff, debuff etc.; a lot stronger than currently and without the combos, but with short cooldowns.

Same. I am trying to force my way through the slog. I take a break every 30 mins to an hour because it's so exhausting. It's like a second job. MILES away from what made PoE1 great, imo. If they are aiming to avoid PoE1 in every way but name, they are hitting all the marks, but it turns out that means slow AF, "meaningful combat" (really just slow) while keeping fast swarming mobs (I can swear it's worse after the "40% reduction" lol), gimpy crafting and loot starvation. They have made some changes to these systems I guess, but the game doesn't seem to feel better. My hard stuck issues are dodge connecting to sprint (implementation fail), Mace way to slow while mobs way to fast/swarmy (still) and campaign too long and frustrating leading to uninteresting end game slog.

Why have I run PoE1 campaign repeatedly for 13+ years and the ramp up to maps is still fun, while every single run of PoE2 has been me forcing myself to get to maps, only to log out within a few hours and not come back?

It may only be a matter of time until I simply don't bother at all. Sad ending.

"

cVGhost#3152 wrote:

I don't feel like coming back to PoE 2 anytime soon after 12 hours of 0.4 tbh. But I might get a good night sleep, or perhaps this cup of coffee i'm drinking right now, or receive a mind-blowing BJ before going to sleep -- which might lead me to making the mistake of booting the game up again tomorrow, sometimes I'm retarded like that when I'm happy.

Yeah, I know the feeling. Me too. Just had to resist doing it.

"

Warchant#2754 wrote:

Same. I am trying to force my way through the slog. I take a break every 30 mins to an hour because it's so exhausting. It's like a second job. MILES away from what made PoE1 great, imo. If they are aiming to avoid PoE1 in every way but name, they are hitting all the marks, but it turns out that means slow AF, "meaningful combat" (really just slow) while keeping fast swarming mobs (I can swear it's worse after the "40% reduction" lol), gimpy crafting and loot starvation. They have made some changes to these systems I guess, but the game doesn't seem to feel better. My hard stuck issues are dodge connecting to sprint (implementation fail), Mace way to slow while mobs way to fast/swarmy (still) and campaign too long and frustrating leading to uninteresting end game slog.

Why have I run PoE1 campaign repeatedly for 13+ years and the ramp up to maps is still fun, while every single run of PoE2 has been me forcing myself to get to maps, only to log out within a few hours and not come back?

It may only be a matter of time until I simply don't bother at all. Sad ending.

You (we) are not alone. Another free weekend and we already lost 40k players peak to peak. Also compared to last free weekend PoE 2 lost like 100k (I guess to D4 of all games bleh).
I felt it even watching the reveal, it was not exactly underwhelming, but also not very exciting to say the least. It felt like they really, really REALLY tried to do new or revamped endgame and focused so much on it but still couldn't do it so we got the leftovers (from what I understand druid was almost done for 0.3 but got pushed back for remaining issues and getting rigs / animations done).

re: campaign in PoE 1:

What the actual fuck, how did you spend 1h and 15m to kill the rust king?

I completely fucked up my Druid build at first, and it still only took me like 35ish minutes to get to Rust King.

I don't think your time to Rust King is about the game being a slog, seems more like you just not understanding how to play other builds than lighting arrow.

That said, I do agree the pacing is off, at least when you start getting into Act 2, and especially Act 3. Too much filler, too big zones... too much time spent going back to town all the time. I like the campaign, but the pacing is completely off on replays.